Man arrested on drug charges at airport gate, terminal evacuated

Posted 6:05PM on Sunday 12th May 2002 ( 23 years ago )

HEBRON, KENTUCKY - A man was arrested when a random airport search found marijuana and he said he had a knife, leading authorities to shut down the main terminal at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport for about 90 minutes on Sunday. The man's statement about a pocket knife prompted the evacuation even though none was found, airport Police Chief Chuck Melville said. The terminal handles 92 percent of airport traffic. ``He said he had one, so we have to take it as if he had one,'' Melville said. Charles Cowsert, 40, of Council Grove, Kansas, was in the Boone County jail in Burlington, Ky., on charges of possessing marijuana and possessing drug paraphernalia. An arraignment was scheduled for Monday in Boone County District Court. A federal agency had earlier reported the man had a weapon and ran from a security checkpoint. ``The information we initially gave is largely incorrect,'' said Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Transportation in Atlanta. The federal Transportation Security Administration would drop its investigation because no weapon was found, she said. ``It's over as far as we're concerned,'' she said. ``It's a police matter.'' Cowsert had passed the main checkpoint, but was chosen for a random gate search by Comair employees, who found marijuana, Melville said. It was in a small bag, airport spokesman Ted Bushelman said. ``He alleged he had a penknife, but no penknife was found,'' the chief said. Cowsert did not run, and airport police were called, he said. Cowsert was supposed to board a Comair flight in Dayton and connect in Cincinnati on the way to Florida, Melville said, but arrived directly at the Cincinnati airport instead. The terminal, the airport's largest, was shut down about 10 a.m., Bushelman said. The terminal's three concourses, which serve Delta and Comair, were evacuated and searched. Thousands of passengers were re-screened, he said. Those on the 10 flights that left the airport during the evacuation were screened upon arrival at their destinations, Bergen said. Nicole Sundgren, a Delta spokeswoman, said flights from Delta's two concourses were delayed up to 45 minutes to allow passengers time to be re-screened. Comair did not return phone messages seeking comment. Later Sunday, an airport worker was holding passengers at the top of an escalator that leads to the security checkpoint, letting groups of 15 to 20 through at a time. The extra traffic control sometimes created a line of up to 40 people, but travel was back to normal by about 4:30 p.m. On April 26, two concourses at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport were shut down for 2.5 hours as passengers were evacuated and rechecked. A security guard overlooked a screening machine alert for possible explosives in a carryon bag. Screeners were unable to find the bag and airport officials could not rule out the possibility that it made it aboard a departing flight. The guard has since been fired.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/5/202244